Soil mix Question

[Hotwheels]

I'm finishing up my second INDOOR grow. 1st time with a long 14 week flower Sativa in soil and here's my biggest regret. (There were a few)
My set up is 4 plants, 2 x 1000w led's, sunshine grow mix, nothing else. Everything's good in veg as they start out in small pots. But when I transplanted to 5 gal. Plastic Pots i can't get run off ! And if i do add enough water to get run off they are under water for 8 days. No run off not a big deal in Veg but a huge deal in flower. Plants had a ton of issues starting at week 7 of 12/12
So with attempt #3 when i transplant into 5 gal cloth pots, heres what im thinking ???
1/3 sunshine GM, 1/3 sea soil, 1/3 peat moss for drainage, and DOLOMITE for the low ph from the peat.
Im hoping this should be more suitable for another long sativa grow.
Anything i might want to consider in this mix ?

 

[VetSmoke85]

20-30% perlite

 

[VetSmoke85]

Helps with the drainage.

 

[bobrown14]

Instead of dolomite go for Gypsum and fish or crab shell meal.

Dolomite has too much Mg and not enough Ca. Use perlite for aeration and drainage the peat is good but its for holding water not drainage. I do 1/3 peat 1/3 humus 1/3 perlite then add amendments.

 

[Hotwheels]

Tx bobrown
So bare with me, scrap the sunshine GM all together? I haven't but want to try sea soil. The gal at the plant shop swears by it.
Sea soil, humus, peat, and perlite sound about right ?
As far as amendments, i was going to try what we've been adding to our compost bin. (coffee grounds, vegy scraps, etc.) or is this not a good idea ?
How much gypsum for 4 x 5 gal. Pots ?
if I follow this my ph will stay relatively neutral ?
Im so done with whats wrong with my plant

 

[bobrown14]

Amendments

These at 1 cup per cubic foot or 7.5 gal - close enough you got say 4 cubic foot or a little more.

Kelp meal
Crab or crustacean meal
malted barley ground fine
Neem Cake
Karanja Cake


Minerals also at 1 cup per cubic foot:

Gypsum powder
basalt dust
glacial rock dust
oyster shell flour

I wood use your compost already made up. No need to add inputs that you put into your compost bin directly into your soil mix. INSTEAD use your finished compost. OR get some at your local nursery.

 

[Emilya Green]

Hi @Hotwheels and welcome to the forum!

Your problem sounds very familiar and I don't think that the soil mix is the problem here. The problem seems to be that for some reason your plants don't have sufficient roots by the time you get to bloom so as to be able to use the water in a 5 gallon container. This problem probably started way back in veg because you were not watering the way they like things to be.

The soil mix and the ideas you have as far as adjusting the soil base pH using dolomite are good ones, but there was nothing at all wrong with the previous soil... the roots just needed better development. Trying the new soil mix and then getting similar results would be terribly frustrating, so I would like to try to keep you from going down that road. I suspect that even though you think you are regulating your water and trying not to soak the plants, you are actually watering too often, and by doing so, you are over watering.

The sunshine mix is a known system... the new mix is not. You will be in the dark for most of this next grow second guessing yourself, as you are now. Let's please examine the thing that would be in common between these two systems, your watering method.

How are you determining when it is time to water? How do you determine how much water to give? It is my belief, that in the answer to these two questions, we will find what has been going wrong with your grows.

 

[bobrown14]

Something I just thought about - re-reading your issue and you soil.

14 week sativa are difficult to grow. So you have that.

What happens over time with cannabis in a container for that long a grow you run out of calcium. Cannabis is a Ca hog. You need short - mid - long term Ca in your soil mix.

I doubt any bagged soil will give that to you. Adding in dolomite compounds the issue.

So what happens is the plant uses up all the Ca to a point where there's too much Mg from the dolomite. This can cause a Mg toxicity. This toxicity looks very much like a Mg or Ca deficit so enter in cal/mag. Things dont improve.

Short term solution I use is a slurry of EWC and kelp meal. 1/2 cup kelp meal 1/2 cup of EWC add to a pint jar and add water top it of shake let sit overnight then pour in.

This can be done as much as needed. Kelp and EWC have everything the plants need.

It gets to be work so best to have everything in the soil already but every once in a while I get a hungry girl and thats what I go to.

 

[Hotwheels]

Hi @Hotwheels and welcome to the forum!

Your problem sounds very familiar and I don't think that the soil mix is the problem here. The problem seems to be that for some reason your plants don't have sufficient roots by the time you get to bloom so as to be able to use the water in a 5 gallon container. This problem probably started way back in veg because you were not watering the way they like things to be.

The soil mix and the ideas you have as far as adjusting the soil base pH using dolomite are good ones, but there was nothing at all wrong with the previous soil... the roots just needed better development. Trying the new soil mix and then getting similar results would be terribly frustrating, so I would like to try to keep you from going down that road. I suspect that even though you think you are regulating your water and trying not to soak the plants, you are actually watering too often, and by doing so, you are over watering.

The sunshine mix is a known system... the new mix is not. You will be in the dark for most of this next grow second guessing yourself, as you are now. Let's please examine the thing that would be in common between these two systems, your watering method.

How are you determining when it is time to water? How do you determine how much water to give? It is my belief, that in the answer to these two questions, we will find what has been going wrong with your grows.

 

[Hotwheels]

Thankyou both for jumping in,
Some history and why I posted this mix question.

This is my 2nd grow, and as with the 1st I wanted them as outdoor potted plants. Germinated in April and it didnt stop raining till June so they went under burples. Last transplant was into 5 Gal. sunshine gm so no need to feed for 4 weeks. Watering @6.3ph / 1L every 3 days. Then water water feed GH grow @ 1.25/L
Lst and scrog. Raised feed to 2.5 and thats when things start going wonky. (June) Check with water to waste for the 1st time and runoff is 5.8
So top dress with dolomite and sunshine GM
The more I read the more the consensus is water to waste. Problem i think is salt based nutes, So I water to waste twice but pots are soaked for 8 days. Now plants start look droopy. Runoff is now 6.2ph back to watering 1L every 3 day. Did I mess up by not adding something for drainage ? Water to waste didn't work. 3 weeks later things are looking good so i Flip and in week 2 switch to GH Bloom 2.5ml /L and pistols burn, was it because I top dressed with sunshine mix ?
Do a flush and Treat with thrive b1 and blackstorm no more GH bloom. Another 8 days of soaked pots. Now I'm getting brown blotches, read more and think I have root rot. Plants grow new pistols but things aren't looking better. Am I starving them with no bloom so I feed with 1.25ml / L well now leaves are falling like snow pistols burn again. I finally cut them down today 2 weeks short of 14 week recommend flower. Lots of clear trichs
I attached pics of when things start going south and a pic of the leaves falling off and then my harvest.
I'd love to hear where I messed up. Was it the pots ? Was it the soil run off ? Was it me ? I just ordered a mars tsl 2000 and 5 gal cloth pots and want 2021 to be
Thanks for your reply

 

[Emilya Green]

I'd love to hear where I messed up. Was it the pots ? Was it the soil run off ? Was it me ?

Hi again @Hotwheels. I am going to be blunt here, because you directly asked where you messed up. It will be hard to hear, but I am going to give you the truth, with both barrels.

It was you, making critical watering decisions for the plants. Deciding that the plants needed 1L every 3 days and not watering to runoff were the biggest mistakes that you made and I suspect that you simply drowned your lower roots by watering this way. If you would have stuck it out when the plants were taking 8 days to drain the soil, and watered correctly only after the soil had completely dried out, that time between waterings would have steadily decreased as the roots got stronger with each wet/dry cycle. This has very little to do with the drainage ability of your soil or the need to add anything else, and much more to do with the strength of the roots. You gave up on the plants ability to better manage the water in your soil given the time to develop, and you started making the critical decisions for them when you perceived that things were slowing down. Top dressing with dolomite didn't help either, i'm afraid... since pH was not the problem.

I also suspect from your descriptions that you did not successively uppot this plant as it was developing. It sounds like you started off in your final container, making proper watering and the management of a wet/dry cycle that much harder. You probably should look into successive uppotting on your next run... it really does make things a lot easier.

Along with overwatering the plant, the pH of your runoff is meaningless in soil... so that measurement not only wasn't the problem... but it confused you into thinking you had to add the dolomite, when, as long as you were properly pH adjusting the fluids as they went into the soil, everything was cool. Depending on how much dolomite you top dressed with, you may have drastically changed the base pH of your soil in that container, making it much harder for your nutrients to be mobile at the lower ends of the 6.2-6.8 soil pH range. Trusting online advice to make this addition based on runoff pH, rather than trusting the soil to be where it needed to be, was also a huge mistake.

 

[Hotwheels]

Makes Sense Emilya
Was I confused ? Oh hell ya !
I just never read anywhere, water to waste and in 8 DAYS ! when it finally dries out, do it again.
Makes you feel like no one else has this issue. Why is my soil a mud pie ?
Next go around i Wiil be just a tad smarter
New light, cloth pots, and some good advice !

 

[bobrown14]

You cant topdress lime. There's your problem right there.

Topdressing lime needs to be done early spring or late fall when nothing is growing. What you do topdressing is changing the soil pH and it can be fairly drastic specially in a container. Enough to really mess things up.

 

[Hotwheels]

You cant topdress lime. There's your problem right there

That was some not so great advice from the local Hydroponics store.
I appreciate all the advice from both of you. I will post a journal in the spring to get feed back before I make costly mistakes. Start to finish.
Thanks again.
This forum rocks !

 

[bobrown14]

Use advice from hydro-store as a "guide" then verify. No question is dumb, people dumb not questions. Sorry to hear about your problems.

Liming soil is a thing but not so much in a container. You can lime your garden outdoors in early spring IF needed.

Soil test is a friend - that will tell you what your soil needs and very cheap. Check your local county extension service.

 

[Emilya Green]

That was some not so great advice from the local Hydroponics store.
I appreciate all the advice from both of you. I will post a journal in the spring to get feed back before I make costly mistakes. Start to finish.
Thanks again.
This forum rocks !

Keep in mind that your local hydro store secretly wants you to fail in soil. They can make a lot more money off of you if you never go organic (the ultimate soil grow) and always keep buying expensive nutrients, test equipment, pumps, timers and hydro kit. Over and over again I see hydro stores recommend hydro nutes to use in soil and other little mistakes, and give bad advice that ends up making your soil grow much more challenging than it needs to be. Buyer beware, and do your research before going to the store.

 

[Emilya Green]

I have a "hydro" store in KC that I like a lot. The owner and the kid that works for him grow in Sohum and 4 or 5 other living soils. He has bags of those soils available in large quantities, along with the Fox Farm soils and nutes. I have put the bug in his ear to carry @GeoFlora Nutrients too. He clearly centers in on soil and organics, but also sells hydro equipment to those who want it. That is the kind of store you want to find around you.

 

[yankeetoker]

I have a "hydro" store in KC that I like a lot. The owner and the kid that works for him grow in Sohum and 4 or 5 other living soils. He has bags of those soils available in large quantities, along with the Fox Farm soils and nutes. I have put the bug in his ear to carry @GeoFlora Nutrients too. He clearly centers in on soil and organics, but also sells hydro equipment to those who want it. That is the kind of store you want to find around you.

Love the GeoFlora Nutrients!